User blog:Pinkguy the b0ss/Super Mario Galaxy 2 Review
What's up my Shreks, it's DiamondMinerStudios here. Today I'm reviewing the gaming masterpiece known as Super Mario Galaxy 2, if you couldn't tell by the title. Again, I don't know much about this game's development history, and since I'm a lazyass and don't feel like doing research, I'll cut right to the chase with this one, though I will say that it was originally planned as an expansion pack for the first game, but eventually became a standalone Mario title. Story It's pretty much the same as the original, with some variation. This time, instead of stealing Peach and her castle, Bowser just steals Peach herself and Mario chases them with the help of the Lumas. Instead of waking up on an unknown planet and going to the comet observatory after catching rabbits, Mario collects one power star and ends up on a small, ugly planetoid that's later revealed to be a spaceship by its "captain" Lubba . He eventually converts it to resemble Mario's face and declares him the new captain. From there, Mario goes on his quest to collect the power stars and save Princess Peach. Like I said in the Mario Galaxy 1 review, this isn't a bad story, but is pretty standard for a Mario game. Like the previous game, the story is told through cutscenes. The presentation isn't quite as spectacular as the first, basically being simplified versions of them, but they still look pretty good by modern standards. Gameplay Just like literally every other Mario game, Mario is the main playable character, but this time, Luigi occasionally appears. And by God, he was handled so much better ''in this game. Instead of having to trudge your way to 120 power stars (yes, including the ones that you hate) to play as him, you can switch (haha lol ) to him if he appears in a level. Then, you unlock him after beating the game. As for Luigi himself, while he is a bit more slippery than Mario, he still plays exceptionally well. Speaking of that, let's talk about the controls. To put it bluntly, they are the exact same as the first game's, which is a good thing. They feel just as natural and responsive as they did in the first game, which makes sense as this game was literally built on the exact same game engine. The spin jump, or "star spin," as it's supposedly called, is just as great of a jump correction tool as it was last time. The thing that helps these controls' case is that there's a far less of those insanely frustrating motion control-centered stars from Galaxy 1, with the only ones being gliding on a bird or the return of that rolling ball crap from the first game. They're in very small quantities, as I just said, with only three galaxies and five stars being dedicated to them... combined. Next, the powerups. They're good for the most part, with the best being the fire flower, rainbow star, drill, cloud flower, and bee mushroom. The rock mushroom and boo mushroom are okay, but their controls are a bit sloppy, and.... sigh.... they brought back the spring mushroom, but not the ice flower or red star. Thankfully, it's barely used, whereas in Galaxy 1 it was mildly overused. The real game changer in this game is Yoshi. My goodness, what a great addition he is to this game. He was great in Mario Sunshine, and he's even better in this game. For one, he doesn't die in deep water (which I still believe isn't as bad of a thing as people say it is in Sunshine, BTW). Another thing is that he has his own powerups - the Dash Pepper, which makes him run fast in a similar manner to the Hover Nozzle from Sunshine, the Blimp Berry, which inflates him and makes him float upwards, the Bulb Berry, which makes Yoshi light up and reveal invisible platforms, and of course, the pink fruit, which...... gives Mario a star bit. I know, ''exciting. Anyways, the powerups in general are good, with Yoshi being the best "powerup" (he is one, right?) of them all. Finally, the level design and structure. The game is structured more like a 2D Mario game, with a traditional level select screen. It works well, and is a bit better than the level select from the original since it's much quicker despite being more railroaded. It also contains collectathon elements, but like the original, it's not really a "true" collectathon, since its levels are mostly linear. However, the main difference is that the levels are way more polished than the original. As good as Galaxy 1 was, the levels in Galaxy 2 make the original look like a tech demo. It takes ideas from the first game, adds new ones, and goes absolutely nuts with them. One of my favorite of these is the cosmic clones. They spawn every few seconds, and mimic every move you make. If you get hit by one, you take damage. It's pretty fun to dodge these clones and can provide a good challenge. The level design of this game far outweighs anything from Galaxy 1. One of the coolest things about this game's levels are the few that reference past games. For instance, Starshine Beach Galaxy and Twisty Trials Galaxy reference Super Mario Sunshine, with Starshine Beach having Piantas and being modeled after Gelato Beach or Bianco Hills (maybe), and Twisty Trials being a remake of the "Secret of Ricco Tower" mission from Ricco Harbor. The most notable one, however, is Throwback Galaxy, which is a remake of Whomp's Fortress from Super Mario 64. It includes a new version of the boss fight with the Whomp King, which is still easy, but more interesting due to the introduction of the small whomps. With all of that said, let's move on to the difficulty. Difficulty Super Mario Galaxy 2 definitely has great difficulty design, and is overall a bit more challenging than Galaxy 1 while still being fairly easy. This time, the big challenging moments are based more on true difficulty (with things such as cosmic clones) than the occasionally artificially difficult star (spring mushroom controls, that one time attack star where you destroy trash with bob-ombs). The bosses are much better in this game, being mostly based on real challenge rather than cheap tricks (though still quite easy) and there being far less of a focus on them. The Bowser fights aren't quite as good as the first game, but are at least interesting and based on good mechanics. None of these Bowser fights are as good as the one from Super Mario World, so... yeah. However, there is one big flaw with this game's design, and I'll bet you can guess what it is. Getting 100% completion. Before discussing this, it's not as frustrating as getting 100% in the first game, mostly because of this game's vastly improved design and the fact that there aren't as many shitty motion control stars. You also don't have to do it all over again as Luigi, which is a massive plus. However, this doesn't mean that this game's 100% experience is free from criticism. For one, the comet stars return. These stars usually have you do a star under pressure from the Cosmic Clones, race Shadow Mario, collect 100 Purple Coins, or do a speedrun of a level. These ones really aren't that bad and can be quite fun, as opposed to the bullshit challenges the first game's comet stars had you do. However, they're still not anything too amazing. Second, a few stars here and there are questionably designed. The Chimp's Challenge and Fluzzard races immediately come to mind. These aren't necessarily bad, but they tend to be mildly annoying sometimes. But, the thing that well and truly makes me want to avoid doing 100% in this game is definitely.... and I'll bet you all saw this one coming.... is the Green Stars and World S. Oh boy, where do I even begin. To start, you have to beat the game to unlock these, so you can't just do them as you play. This makes it very annoying to go after these things. Second, the stars are scattered all over the place, often put in spots you won't ever figure out without a guide. This only serves to pad out the gameplay longer than it should. Finally, World S. This also only serves to stretch the game out longer. The world goes on for too long, contains green stars, and has a brutally difficult final challenge - the Grandmaster Galaxy. The first star isn't so bad, but the comet star.... ha ha ha.... You have to do this insanely hard level.... with only one hit. Goddammit, I thought these guys learned their lesson from the first game, but nope, of course not. They just had to throw this one last curveball at you. One thing you may say is this, "But.... but... How can you like Super Mario Sunshine blue coins but at the same time hate Super Mario Galaxy 2 green stars? HYPOCRITE!" As for that... I don't really know what to tell you. I guess it's because I find that the Green Stars are in even more obscure locations than the blue coins, which were generally in pretty obvious spots save for a select few. In addition, you can look for blue coins while you're going for a shine as they don't kick you out of a level, whereas you'll often have to do an entire star again in Galaxy 2 to get one. If you miss the star, you'll have to do this mission again and again until you get it, which gets pretty irritating. However, even though I don't particularly enjoy 100% completion in this game, I can still say that I love the Any% experience where you only collect 70 of the 242 total stars. Soundtrack Super Mario Galaxy 2 has a fantastic soundtrack. I could just say that and call it a day, but that alone wouldn't do it justice. Without so much as a bad song to its name, Super Mario Galaxy 2 has an even better soundtrack than the first game due to every song using real instruments. Highlights include Sky Station Galaxy, Yoshi Star Galaxy, Melty Monster Galaxy, Puzzle Plank Galaxy, the World 3 Map Theme, Fluffy Bluff Galaxy, and the themes from the Bowser levels and Throwback Galaxy, being remixes of Bowser's Road and the Bob-Omb Battlefield theme. It's not the best Mario soundtrack ever, but I still love it nonetheless. So with that, let's move on to the final stretch of this review - the part where I talk about the graphics or something. Graphics They're practically identical to the first game, but once again, this is by no means a bad thing. They still look fantastic, even on the CRT TV I played this game on. Even though they're not HD, just like how Galaxy 1 wasn't HD either, they look like they could pass off as such to someone who doesn't know any better. So yeah, Galaxy 2's graphics look fantastic to this day. Conclusion Wow, this is one of the best games I've ever played. It's not my absolute favorite Mario game, (Sunshine remains at the top with 64 following it at second, mostly because I prefer open-ended collectathons, then World comes in at third, SMB3 at fourth, Mario Land 2 at fifth, then Advance 2 and Advance 4 and sixth and seventh respectively, Super Mario Bros. at eighth, and Super Mario Land at ninth), but this game is well-deserving of the title of my favorite Wii game. It takes everything Galaxy 1 did well and improves upon it immensely, and ends up being a hell of a lot more enjoyable because of it. If I had to put it anywhere on my personal top 10 of Mario games that I always mention in these conclusions, it would come in at eighth. I will tell you this - if you haven't played this game for whatever reason, play it. If you don't have a Wii or Wii U, I think it's a great choice to buy one for this game (before you say it, no, I'm not advertising Nintendo here), or if you prefer to play on PC rather than console, I suggest picking up the ROM for the Dolphin emulator. However you do it, play this game, you'll do yourself a massive favor by doing so. Thanks for reading, and see you next time. Category:Blog posts